The plan uses current, proven, commercially available technologies in a 60/40 split between solar thermal and wind. Their plans maps the sites of the solar and wind modules to areas with appropriate sun and wind resources that are suitably close to major cities.

The upfront costs of the plan have been calculated, with a quoted figure of $35-40 billion per year for 10 years – the equivalent of 3-4% of Australia’s GDP. The group state that with the economies of scale associated with such a project, the cost of installing these solar and wind options are close to parity with that of coal power. The upside, of course, is we won’t have to deal with the many dirty consequences of coal mining and coal-fired power plants, and that we will have invested in a brand new grid of energy utilities that requires no fuel inputs.

Beyond Zero Emissions are keen to take on the might of the fossil fuel lobby, who have long run a scare campaign about renewable energy: specifically that renewables are too expensive, can’t provide baseload power, will cost jobs and will ‘wreck the economy’. Level-headed analysis dismisses those claims as scare tactics by vested interests.

The T10 plan show that there are no resource constraints (steel, concrete, glass, labour, etc) that are holding us back from a 100% renewable energy grid in one decade’s time. Personally, I think there are just three things holding us back:

community members who have not been informed that such economical clean energy alternatives exist and are ready to be deployed

politicians stuck in the ‘coal, coal, coal’ mindset who have not been shown a vision of the benefits that a transition to renewable energy would provide for the economy and society

environmentally informed citizens who are not doing all that they can do to make this plan succeed (I raise my hand to this category)

Please take ten minutes to watch the above video, and please help spread the word of this credible plan. We need this issue on the agenda in the lead-up to the 2010 federal election.